News
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Plant trees, add solar: How cities can fight urban heat
A combination of tree cover at street level and rooftop solar panels may be the best approach to combat urban heat in a warming climate, new research has indicated. Scientists from Canada, the United States, Spain and Australia looked at how three cities with different climates – Phoenix, Toronto, and Miami – can deal with…
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Understanding rainfall variability in the tropics
The tropics, located near the Equator, are known for their high temperatures and abundant rainfall. However, not all places in the tropics are equal, and one key reason for this is the distribution of water vapour, or humidity, across the globe, writes Monash University PhD student Corey Robinson. In general, air near the surface flows…
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Climate models are letting our cities down
Global climate models represent our coastal cities as oceans, while regional models fail to represent their true complexity, posing a barrier to future planning and resilience, writes 21st Century Weather Chief Investigator Negin Nazarian. In Australia, 87% of our population lives along the coast, most in cities that drive much of Australia’s economic activity. Understanding…
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Melissa Hart among Wellcome Trust grant recipients
Please join us in congratulating 21st Century Weather’s Associate Director Melissa Hart and her collaborators, who have received AU$4.2 million in Wellcome Trust grant funding to research the heat health burden on First Nations communities in under-resourced remote Australia. Led by Associate Professor Supriya Mathew of the Menzies School of Health Research, the funded project…
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How machine learning can decode wind patterns in our cities
Imagine predicting the wind flow around you with precision – perhaps to find a refreshing breeze on a hot day or a sheltered spot when it’s chilly. Until now, such predictions would require solving complex physical models on supercomputers – far too demanding for personal devices like phones, ipads and laptops to handle. Researchers at…